I would like to insert here that we don't know all the shards involved in Roshar. There are FOUR involved. Odium, the Almighty, Cultivation and an unknown one.
Odium wasn't one of the three that created Roshar in the first place; those would be the Almighty, Cultivation, and the unknown. Odium came after the fact, as it were, and has presumably been really messing around. For a long time, apparently.
There are four involved? Where's that from?
Is it possible to try and assign numbers to the shards? Each world seems to have magic numbers. Mistborn is the most obvious, with Preservation liking the number 16. The number 10 is big in the Stormlight Archive. And after reading Warbreaker again, it seems like the number 5 shows up a lot: the five scholars, the five visions, Returned are of the fifth Heightening, and a few other places.
Would it be crazy to guess that Endowment is the 5th shard, The Almighty of WoK is the 10th, and Preservation was the 16th?
The only problem I see is that Ruin never had a number manifested (but that could just be because Preservation had more contact with humans), and on other worlds with multiple shards it'd be hard to decide what numbers are special, and which shard sponsors them.
I can't think of any numbers from Elantris either. Can anyone else help me out?
Ruin could have been 4th, and 4 4s are 16...
Also, 16 is supposedly significant to the entire Cosmere, not just Scadriel, so perhaps RUIN is 16th, and Preservation used it because of its wider significance. Or perhaps it's all coincidence.
<snip of quoted quotes>
He says he began life as a thought and concept. Is it possible that he wasn't originally human like the others appeared to be, but some creature from Shadesmar?
Or perhaps he's just playing on words and one of his names had a meaning related to thoughts or concepts.